Doctor Who and the Space Cases
by Born-Of-Elven-Blood
Summary: Radu is dying, and the crew of the Christa have sent out a distress signal, calling for the help of a doctor... Yep! When a class of misfit kids on a long strange trip through outer space crosses paths with a madman in a big blue box, what could possibly go wrong?
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer - Doctor Who belongs to Stephen Moffat and the BBC and probably a bunch of other people who aren't me; Space Cases belongs to Peter David, Bill Mumy, Nickelodeon, and probably a bunch of different other people who also aren't me. This story is purely for entertainment (mostly mine) and is not intended for sale or profit.**

 **A/n: This story is a dream I had. Seriously, except for where I fleshed out a few bits of exposition, and the fact that the Doctor's face kept switching between Ten, Eleven, Twelve and Four, what you're about to read is at least 99% verbatim from my dreaming mind. That will teach me to read** _ **Ghosts of India**_ **while watching** _ **Space Cases - Runaway**_ **before bed.**

 **Yes, I am writing fanfiction in my sleep now – should I be worried?**

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 _ **~ Doctor Who and the Space Cases ~**_

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 **Chapter 1**

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It was just another day aboard the Christa as she soared through space on her long journey back towards the Starcademy. Harlan and Radu were at their stations in the Compost on monitor duty. Not that there was anything to monitor.

"Man, why are we even up here?" Harlan complained. "Nothing's going to happen. Nothing's happened for weeks. Nothing _ever_ happens."

"That's good, isn't it?" Radu said absently. He'd been sort of staring off into space for a while now, paying an uncharacteristic lack of attention to the navigational controls in front of him. _Must be as bored as I am_ _,_ Harlan thought.

"I guess so," Harlan replied grudgingly. Then he shrugged irritably. "No! It's not! Man, when I was a kid, my dad had all these amazing Stardog stories about flying through the galaxy, meeting danger head on, fighting in death defying battles, narrow escapes from impossible situations…" He sighed. "He never mentioned three week stretches of mind-numbing boredom."

Expecting either a predictably reassuring platitude or a disapproving admonishment, Harlan quickly thought up a few cutting comebacks, in vague hopes of picking a fight. Anything to fend off the tedium for a minute or two.

So he was disappointed when all Radu offered was a noncommittal "hmm…" and lapsed back into silence.

Frowning with affront, Harlan turned to see Radu once more staring off into space, an unfocused quality to his eyes.

"Hey! I'm talking here! Jeez, I thought Andromedans were supposed to be good listeners! With those ears, you shouldn't be able to help it."

"Huh?" Radu replied, turning as though startled to see that Harlan was still there.

Harlan's frown deepened.

"What's with you, _Hairdu_ ," he jibed. "You've been really spaced out lately." He almost added ' _that's not like you'_ _,_ but it sounded too much like a compliment in his head, so he kept it to himself.

Radu shook his head, brow furrowing. "I've just been… sort of… distracted… I'm having trouble focusing on…" he pursed his lips, glanced up at Harlan, then away. "Suzee's coming," he said quietly, effectively changing the subject. Harlan noticed a faint tinge of pink in the Andromedan's pale cheeks and pulled a face.

Suzee had been a bone of contention between them almost since the moment she arrived aboard, but lately it was turning into a real sore spot for Harlan. He knew that Suzee really enjoyed his attention (hey, what girl wouldn't?) and she always flirted back. But it had become all too clear to him that (for reasons completely beyond his comprehension) she really preferred Radu.

Harlan didn't understand why a great guy like him couldn't catch a break with the ladies. Losing Catalina before he could tell her how he felt had been bad enough. Terrible. Devastating even. (Sometimes he still had nightmares about her cries of fear as the airlock closed, mixing chillingly with the muted roar of the Christa's sister ship exploding. Harlan shivered and pushed those awful memories aside in favor of the sour grapes in front of him.) Now Suzee, despite his clearly superior looks, skills, charm, heroism and general dashing boldness, kept turning away from him to make eyes at the clumsy, tongue-tied, terminally dense Andromedan.

On some level Harlan was man enough to admit that part of the reason he liked Suzee was simply because Radu had liked her first; that there was a petty, angry, naturally competitive streak in him that still despised all Andromedans on principle, and couldn't bear to stand by and let Radu be the guy who got the girl.

Unfortunately, that level was buried deep, deep down in his subconscious, way underneath said petty, angry, naturally competitive streak.

Consequently, he couldn't quite figure out why it bugged him so much that Radu, who was almost hopelessly smitten with Suzee, never did anything about it. What was his problem? Did that superhuman hearing make him selectively blind or something? How could he not see his own good luck that a gorgeous exotic girl somehow, against all sense and sanity, liked him best? _He's doing it to annoy me, I just know it!_

Harlan opened his mouth to voice the accusation aloud, when he was interrupted by the forecasted arrival of Suzee through the Compost door.

"Well, there's nothing wrong with the engines," she announced, walking over to lean against the helm. "Nothing _at all_ _._ I checked. _Several_ times," she enunciated with a disappointed sigh. "Never thought I'd see the day I _wanted_ to find a misalignment in the prism or an imbalance in the protomix. I've still got two inducers to reassemble, but I don't know what I'm going to do after that. I can only beat Rosie so many times at Minbar chess."

She was addressing herself almost pointedly to Harlan and all but ignoring Radu, who had all of a sudden taken a keenly renewed interest in the readouts on the navigation station. _She's as bad as he is_ _._ Harlan wanted to roll his eyes at both of them.

Then he had a better idea. Smirking slyly to himself, he reached over the helm station and wound a lock of her rainbow-colored hair playfully around one finger. _Cat's red was redder_ _…_ he shook off the thought, and the regret it carried.

"Hey, if you're bored, maybe you and I could find something fun to do," he suggested warmly, leaning closer over the helm so that they were nearly nose to nose. "Maybe something involving a repeat of that kiss the other day."

The kiss in question had taken place three weeks back, after they had escaped from the crazed space station Pezu and a vengeful Warlord Shank. In the adrenaline rush of the moment, he had kissed Suzee, Suzee had kissed Radu (and Bova had kissed nobody, as he had grumbled about under his breath for several days, until Harlan had suggested he go kiss Rosie – that had shut him up!) That had been the last excitement any of them had seen since the inception of the three boring weeks of doom. Maybe a little reminder of the stakes would finally rattle Radu into action. _If this doesn't get a rise out of him…_

"Sorry, Harlan," Suzee replied with a coquettish smile, still overtly not looking in Radu's direction, "I don't think I've _ever_ been that bored."

Harlan pouted and pressed a hand to his chest as though she'd mortally wounded him, then glanced slyly over to see how dismayed his navigator must be by now. His eyes widened.

"Hey! Radu!" he exclaimed, all thoughts of flirtations and fighting forgotten.

He leapt down from the helm and he and Suzee rushed over to where Radu lay slumped over the navigation station, completely unconscious, a few wisps of steam curling worryingly from his ears.

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* * *

Radu wouldn't wake. Stimulants had no effect. Shouting had no effect. Neither did shaking, pinching or smacking – Harlan made thoroughly sure of that, and felt unjustly persecuted when Suzee shouted at him for it. No matter what they tried, Radu's eyes remained obstinately closed, his brow furrowed slightly as though he were concentrating furiously on something, even in his sleep. At a loss, they finally took him to the medlab (or rather, Thelma took him to the medlab, and they trailed after her, looking worried and still bickering half-heartedly over Harlan's brand of TLC).

Consequently, no one noticed when, several minutes later, a little red warning light began blinking insistently on the tactical scanner.

.

* * *

"How is he?" asked Suzee as she stepped through the door to the medlab. "Any change?"

"No, nothing," Rosie said, her voice edged with distress.

Bova stood beside her, frowning at the readouts on his compupad. "This would be a lot easier if we didn't have to cross reference every biochemical readout with a meteorological chart," he grumbled.

Suzee approached the exam bed slowly, lip caught worriedly between her teeth, and sighed heavily down at its occupant.

It was hours since Radu had suddenly collapsed at his station. He hadn't woken up since. The steam had stopped venting from his ears, but his skin had taken on a cold, clammy quality that almost made her wish the steam would come back. Scans showed the cause quite clearly – his biostats were dangerously out of balance, and getting worse by the minute – but so far none of the tests they had run could explain the _cause_ of the cause. There was no infection, no injury, no disorder of any kind, nothing they could treat or cure; his body had just suddenly gone haywire, and not even Andromedan strength and endurance would hold up forever under these conditions.

If they couldn't find a way to fix him, and soon, he was going to die.

"I just don't get it!" Rosie exclaimed, her shoulders slumping as the microscanner hummed over Radu's still form and then chirped a cheerful little 'all clear' at her. "It still says there isn't anything wrong with him!"

"With all due respect to your budding medical skills, Rosie, this is no time for you to be playing doctor!" Miss Davenport interjected from where she was pacing ineffectually behind them, ostensibly supervising, and all but vibrating with the suppressed need to micromanage. Her voice was edged with a prim and deliberate veneer of calm stretched paper thin over her overriding instinct to panic. "This is clearly beyond any of us. What we need is a trained and qualified physician! A _real_ doctor!"

"We've transmitted a general distress signal," Suzee reminded her, lacing her fingers together in an unconscious gesture; it kept her from reaching out and laying her hand over Radu's. She really should be in the engine room. She could have called the medlab over the com for an update… but… "With all this down time, I've got the engines running at peak efficiency," she offered a bit lamely, proud of how strong and even her voice sounded; she cleared her throat anyway, "so we're moving at optimum sublight speed. Once I get the protomix inducers reinitialized I can bring the hyperdrive back online. Hopefully…"

" _Compost to medlab_ _!"_ Harlan's voice called through the com system.

"What is it, Mr. Band?" Miss Davenport responded.

" _Thelma says we're getting a response to the distress signal!"_ Harlan said.

"That's great!" Rosie exclaimed.

"Don't get your hopes up," Bova warned glumly. "Whoever they are, I bet they've never even seen an Andromedan before."

" _Yeah, it's great, but…"_

"What's the problem, Harlan?"

" _The response isn't coming from a ship."_

"A planet then?" Miss Davenport demanded. "Space station? Interstellar probe? Star whale? What?"

" _Thelma says it's a… telephone box."_

"What's a telephone?" Rosie wondered.

" _I don't know, but the visual is… hey, wait a minute, it's…!"_

Harlan's exclamation was cut off by the sudden, deafening intrusion of a wheezing, groaning roar. It was almost loud enough to drown out Miss Davenport's shriek of alarm and the metallic thud from the deck plates as she fainted with fear. A stupendously swirling draft of displaced air and a pulsing flash of light made them shield their eyes. When the wind died down, they lowered their hands to find the corner of the medlab now occupied.

It was a strange blue box. The words "Police Public Call Box" were written at the top.

"What's a police?" Rosie wondered.

Before anyone could speculate, the front of the box swung inward.

"Hello," came a voice from within. "I hear you're looking for a doctor!"

* * *

 **TBC  
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 **A/n: Apparently I'm one of about three people that ever shipped Suzee and Radu. Thug life! Er... maybe not. But seriously, Space Cases and Doctor Who! What could go wrong... (review and find out!)  
**


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer: Second verse same as the first!**

 **A/n: Nah, I'm not going to make you wait. I wrote the whole 18k-word thing in three days – now if only I could get myself to dream about** _ **Painting Roses**_ **, everybody would be a lot happier.**

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* * *

 **Chapter 2**

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* * *

Commander Goddard was the last of the crew to flock to the medlab. He strode through the door at pace, his expression thunderous, to find the rest standing around in bewildered silence as a strange man in suspenders, a tweed coat and a bowtie darted around, gaping at every instrument and screen in the room like a tourist fresh off the transport shuttle.

"A spaceship called Christa!" the man was saying to no one in particular, eyes alight with a childlike glee. "Bit odd, but, who am I to judge? I once named a galaxy Alison. Seriously though, a semi-biologic, quasi-sentient ship, with, what? – ooh, Lumanian design by the look of it, bioprint relays, crystalline-refractive control, primitive ARS, protomix hyperdrive, vortex manipulation matrix with dimensional shifting capabilities – I've never seen a configuration like this! What a beauty! And you say she can only be piloted by children? Ha ha! That's a treat! First rate! Splendiferous! …er, no, promised myself I'd never say that again… but really, just top notch!"

Meanwhile, from inside a big blue box that was crammed into the far corner of the medlab, there came a metallic clanking and crashing, followed by an echoing squeal of pure delight.

"A helmic regulator! RDS _and_ DDS! Friction contrafibulator! Chameleon arch! Gravatic anomalizer! Oooh, a wibbly lever!" There was some more crashing and clanging. The sound was strangely hollow, as though it were coming from a much larger space than the narrow box could possibly hold. "Oh Grozit, no way, this fluid link is amazing! Mercury's a bit low though…"

Suzee burst out of door to the box and nearly ran smack into the stranger.

"I love your ship!" they shouted at each other in ecstatic unison, before breaking apart and running past one another to keep exploring.

"What is going on here?" Goddard demanded, flummoxed and trying not to show it. "Who is this guy?"

"He answered the distress call," Harlan explained.

"He's a doctor!" Rosie added hopefully from where she and Bova were fanning a still-swooning Miss Davenport beside the far console.

"Doctor?" Goddard repeated, suspicious. "Doctor who?"

"No, just the Doctor," the stranger called absently over his shoulder as he flicked a quietly humming probe out of his jacket and began waving it diligently around the room. "Let's see! Humans, Rigelians, girl with gills – love it! – Thelma unit… and one comatose Andromedan. Prisoner?" he inquired conversationally.

"No!" Rosie exclaimed, aghast. "Radu's a member of the crew!"

"Ah, good! Post war, then."

"What do you mean, postwar?" Harlan demanded skeptically. "Just how long have you been floating around out here in that box, anyway?"

"Sorry, must have slipped a time track, don't mind me."

"What kind of doctor travels around the galaxy in a box anyway?" Bova commented. "He's probably some kind of mad scientist."

"Oh, I'm definitely that!" the Doctor said cheerfully.

"See?" Bova said lightly, brightening at have his pessimism justified. "With our luck, he'll surgically harvest our organs and sell them on the intergalactic black market."

Miss Davenport, who was just beginning to revive, groaned at his words and rolled her eyes back in another dead faint.

"You're not helping, Mr. Bova," Goddard snapped. He gestured at the stranger. "How did he get aboard this ship?" He glared pointedly at Harlan.

"It's not my fault, Commander!" Harlan said, his tone all wounded innocence, despite the unspoken but palpable, _'this time'_ _._

"Yeah, Dad, it's not his fault," the man calling himself 'just the Doctor' interrupted as he finally finished his self-guided tour through the medlab by coming to a stop beside Radu's prone form. He ran his humming scanner over him and flicked it up, raising an eye brow at whatever it told him.

"Excuse me?" Goddard asked, perturbed. " _Dad?!_ "

"I said it's not his fault." The stranger lowered his scanner and turned to Goddard. "I just sort of turned up. I do that, it's sort of my thing. Well, one of my things. That and badminton, but you mustn't tell anyone…"

"Commander," Goddard corrected him in something very much like a growl.

"No, _Doctor_ ," the Doctor corrected him patiently.

Goddard scowled.

"Look, whoever you are, however you got here, you're a doctor, right?" He waved an arm at the exam bed, where Radu remained completely unmoved by the low-grade chaos erupting around him. "Can you help him?"

The Doctor lingered for a moment, smiling into the Commander's eyes. Neither flinched, and an inkling of respect was purchased by both. Without further ado, the Doctor spun in place and bent back over the exam bed, probe droning and flickering.

"Let's see, shall we?" he said. "Andromedan male, approximately eleven Earth-standard-years old, puts him close to full maturity. Five foot four, two hundred pounds, molecular density of 63 on the Valeran* scale, all perfectly average. Hmm, but that isn't…elevated cardial activity, elevated temperature, barometric pressure dropping… dropping? What?" The Doctor thwacked the scanning tool against his hand and pointed it at Radu again, squinting. "Oh, that's not good… minor internal condensation… cloudy with a chance of… elevated androgenic… low band psionic… oh… ohhh… oh, I see!"

And the Doctor snickered quietly.

"What's so funny?" Harlan demanded.

"Nothing, nothing," the Doctor waved the question away. "Alright, three questions! First, has he eaten anything strange lately?"

"Everything he eats is strange," Harlan shuddered, recalling Radu's breakfast of raw narf intestines. (In fairness, Radu had found Harlan's breakfast of "cooked chicken embryos and fried strips of pig flesh" equally disgusting).

"Uhhhh- _huh_ … second! Has he come into contact with any unusual substances or alien objects?"

"Not recently," Rosie said. "He did pick up a space virus from an alien teddy bear last year, but I cured him."

"That sounds like a story I want to hear! But later, later! Third question: where's his girlfriend?"

The crew exchanged incredulous looks.

"Radu doesn't have a girlfriend…" Rosie exclaimed.

"He wouldn't know what to do with one," Harlan laughed.

"What about Elmira?" Suzee said, emerging from the stranger's strange ship, her engineering exuberance having finally banked itself down to a pensive expectancy. There was something shrewd and very careful in her tone, and in the way she was watching the newcomer.

"Hey, yeah!" Rosie agreed. "Wow, I guess he does sort of have a girlfriend."

"Great, now people in comas are managing to have more interesting love lives than me," Bova muttered glumly.

"They've gotten pretty close, but I wouldn't call her his girlfriend," Harlan interjected skeptically.

"Has anyone ever told you lot that you're incredibly confusing to talk to?" the Doctor interrupted. "And I have it on excellent authority that, coming from me, that is really saying something."

"Can we focus please?" Goddard interrupted.

"Good idea!" the Doctor exclaimed, giving the Commander a pat on the shoulder, then removing his hand with awkward grace under the force of Goddard's glare. "Er… very good. Elmira, you say? Not Andromedan, I take it?"

"No, she's a Spung. How did you know that?"

"Spung…" The Doctor grimaced. "I'm not judging you," he assured the unconscious Radu rather too pointedly, patting his shoulder in much the same way he had Goddard's. "Very ' _Romeo and Juliet_ '… So, where is the, ah, lovely lizard in question?"

"Oh, well, she's not here," Rosie said. "We haven't heard from her in a while. I really hope she's okay…"

"Is that so?" the Doctor mused, cocking an eyebrow as he glanced down at Radu, then around at the assembled crew. "The plot thickens…" he murmured mysteriously, then stifled another little snicker at whatever inside joke he was sharing with himself.

Goddard had had enough.

"Look, Mister –"

" _Doc-tor,"_ the Doctor enunciated, glancing around with wide eyes as though to say to the rest ' _is he slow or what_ _?'_

" _Doctor_ _,_ " Goddard snarled through gritted teeth. "This charade has gone on long enough. Can you do anything for him, or not?"

"You can, can't you?" Suzee said, watching the Doctor with penetrating eyes. She had seen what was inside the blue box. Where she came from, half of the technology in there was still nothing but the fevered dream of a mad theoretical scientist – and the other half was beyond even that. "Surely you can do something."

Across the room, Harlan frowned, perturbed. He was worried about Radu too, albeit a touch grudgingly, but he didn't like the thinly veiled note of pleading in Suzee's voice, or the way her eyes flicked constantly towards the exam bed, as though she were fighting not to look and couldn't help it.

The Doctor fixed his eyes fully on Suzee, and despite his clownish behavior up to now, Suzee suddenly felt breathless under the weight of his piercing stare. Later she would tell herself she imagined it, but in that moment, she swore she could see the vast, ageless star-flecked turn of the universe gleaming in his eyes. She'd once looked into a black hole on a school trip; she felt now the way she had felt then – as though she were staring into a force of nature too much vaster and deeper than herself to ever genuinely understand.

Then he smiled at her, and she blinked, and the spell was broken.

"What's your name?" he asked her.

"Suzee. From Yensid," she felt compelled to add, as though trying to justify and define her presence before him for reasons beyond her immediate understanding.

"Well, Suzee from Yensid, let's see…" he spread his arms, looking around in speculative delight. "A fantastic, one-of-a-kind ship, with a motley crew quite unlike any I've met before – and that _is_ saying something. A young life hanging in the balance. An audience – all eyes on me, good, good, I'm rubbish without an audience. Now if only there were some sort of cataclysmic emergency to spice things up a bit…"

Suddenly the deck shuddered and bucked beneath their feet as something struck the Christa's outer hull.

"That's more like it!" the Doctor cried.

 **.**

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 **TBC**

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 **A/n: If you review, Rosie will make you some of her super special fudge squares – and she even promises not to mistake the glue bottle for marshmallow sauce this time!**


	3. Chapter 3

**Disclaimer: Ditto**

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 **.**

 **Chapter 3**

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The ship shook ominously.

"What was that?" Harlan exclaimed.

"Thelma!" Goddard shouted.

"Yes, Commander?" Thelma replied from directly behind him. Goddard startled in spite of himself.

"What happened? Are we under attack?"

"No!" Thelma replied brightly. "We are not under attack."

"Well, that's a relief!" Rosie exclaimed.

"The ship has merely been caught in the gravity well of a cosmic string filament," Thelma continued reassuringly. "The ship is currently being drawn off course, bombarded by energy wave fragments and pulled into the singularity at the epicenter."

"You mean we're going to be crushed to death?" Bova cried. Beside him, Miss Davenport, who had been struggling her way upright, tumbled back down again.

"Oh, no, not at all!" Thelma replied brightly.

"Oh good, you had me worried," Harlan sighed.

"The ship will be torn to shreds by the gravimetric forces first. You will all be dead long before catastrophic compression begins," Thelma finished helpfully.

"Figures," Bova groused.

"This is just crackers!" the Doctor exclaimed happily, chafing his hands together in excitement. "Do you lot always have this much fun on a Tuesday?" He winked happily at Suzee, who gave him an incredulous stare in return.

"What do we do?" Rosie cried.

"Harlan, Bova, Thelma, with me to the Compost! Suzee, get down to the engine room and power up the hyperdrive, we may have to risk a jump. Rosie, stay here and keep an eye on things. Don't let _him_ _,"_ Goddard jabbed a finger towards the Doctor, "out of your sight. Miss Davenport…" he grimaced down at her in exasperation. "Don't go anywhere. And you," he rounded fiercely on the Doctor. "Since you're here, you might as well see what help you can be to Radu."

Without another word, the crew leapt into action, but Suzee paused beside Radu, distressed to see little ice crystals forming along the delicate ridges of his spiral ears.

"That wasn't there a minute ago…" she whispered mostly to herself. "He's getting worse."

"Well, it's a distressing situation," the Doctor commented from over her shoulder. Suzee turned to look at him. He was waving his probe device over Radu again, his expression almost comically enigmatic. "Heart rates are spiking, respirations are increasing, fight or flight chemicals are being pumped into bloodstreams. That's all bound to magnify the fault in his body chemistry."

"But he's unconscious!" Suzee countered. "How could he react to the danger, when he doesn't even _know_ about it?"

"How indeed…" the Doctor muttered. He was glancing curiously between herself and Radu, and Suzee couldn't suppress a blush at obvious, if erroneous connection he was drawing. The ship rocked dangerously again, and there was a crackling crash from somewhere far below. The Doctor shot Suzee a bright grin. "We'd better get down to the engine room!"

"Wait a minute, you can't go!" Rosie cried from where she was struggling to prop Miss Davenport more securely into the corner of the console. "I'm supposed to be watching you!"

"I'll be much more use in the engine room right now," the Doctor assured her. "I'm sure Dad will understand. Even better, what Dad doesn't know won't hurt us!"

"That nickname is going to stick, I can just feel it," Suzee groaned, trying not to grin in spite of everything.

"But what about Radu?" Rosie whined, her red face going redder as the stress of the situation threatened to overheat her. Miss Davenport's uniform began to smoke and blacken worryingly where Rosie was holding her.

"Hmm, alright, tell you what…" The Doctor adjusted the settings on his device, and the chirping hum dulled and deepened to a slow, sonorous thrum. "Lowest frequency I've ever tried," he confided. "Even lower than when I had to hypnotize the swarm mother of the Queen Beehive on Melissa Majoria – hey, righ, a planet called Melissa! We're batting a thousand today! – see, the swarm mother has these ultra molecularly dense sensory fibers growing right out of her…"

"Doctor!" Suzee cried as the ship rocked violently.

"Doctor!" Rosie cried as Radu began to shiver.

"Right!" the Doctor exclaimed, tossing the device to Rosie. "Apply heat to his chest, no more than 43 degrees centigrade, while moving that around his head, activating the sonic pulses in twenty second intervals. Don't drop it, don't lose it and for goodness sake, don't stick it inhis ear unless you want to be electrocuted. Don't get me wrong, you haven't lived until you've survived a lightning storm inside an Andromedan healing tower, but I think we've got enough on our docket for one day, don't you? Now, Suzee from Yensid, let's go play with the hyperdrive!"

Somehow, it didn't seriously occur to either girl to question his instructions. He was clearly in his element and there was a quality about him now that commanded attention and obedience and a giddiness just this side of fear, even as it disarmed and endeared; even for misfits like them, the failures among the failures, following his lead felt so natural that it didn't seriously occur to either girl that they could fail.

As he herded Suzee towards the jump chutes, she looked back to see Rosie already attempting to follow the Doctor's instructions, her hands glowing like firebrands with the heat radiating through her gloves. Something in her chest unwound as she saw that Radu had already stopped shivering so violently; the hoarfrost gathering on his ears was melting, little sparks of static electricity dancing along the water droplets, and over the crashing of the ship and the hum of the probe, she thought she heard a quiet peal of something oddly not-quite-like thunder. It wasn't curing him, but maybe it was stabilizing him. That would have to be enough for now.

"A ship with slides between decks!" the Doctor chuckled in delight as Suzee punched the wall panel and leapt into the chute. "Must be Christmas!"

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* * *

Suzee was off and running, already in the process of initializing the hyperdrive relays by the time the Doctor came flying out of the jump chute with a shameless, "Wheeeee!" He was still laughing as he rushed to her side, agile despite the uncertain shaking of the deck and the way the bulkheads groaned and sparked, and seamlessly stepped in behind her, balancing the protomix feed through each relay in perfect preparation for the reinitialization sequence. The dichotomy of such obvious engineering competence beside his irreverent amusement at the fact that they were all about to die was many things to Suzee, but she settled on irksome.

"You're weird, you know that?" she told him testily as her hands flew over the command entries on the injector panel.

"Says the girl with gills," he shot back as the injectors clicked and whirred to life. "Go align the crystal while I finish this. Even with _me_ here, there's no point in wasting resources."

"I thought you were a doctor," Suzee snapped, annoyed at being ordered around in _her_ engine room. But she abandoned the relays and rushed over to the prism without argument.

"I am!" the Doctor said defensively. "I thought you were a school girl!"

"I am!" Suzee said, equally defensive. "I also happen to be an engineering genius!"

"Well, la-dee-dah," the Doctor retorted, then grinned manically at her. "A powerfully psychic engineering genius with gills. I really must visit Yensid one of these days!"

Suzee risked darting a glance at the Doctor around the glare of the prism. "How did you know I have psychic powers?"

"My sonic screwdriver is pretty handy little doodad. Scans for all sorts of things. Plus," he spared one hand to tap the side of his head, "I've got one or two mental powers myself. Enough to feel a telepathic field as strong as yours from this close, anyway."

"If you're a doctor, why do you know so much about engineering?"

"I never said I was a medical doctor," the Doctor muttered.

"What!" Suzee exclaimed, nearly shoving the prism completely out of alignment as she turned horrified eyes on him. "If you're not a doctor then how are you going to help Radu!"

"Hey, I'm not just _a_ doctor, I'm _the_ Doctor!" he replied, showing her wounded eyes. "And you're not the only genius around here, you know. I already have a theory, and as a matter of fact it is bearing out as we speak." The Doctor smirked at her knowingly. "You're _awfully_ concerned about him," he said slyly.

The abrupt change of subject threw Suzee off her guard.

"What?" She paled, then shrugged, then shook her head almost frantically, then settled on a rather forced sounding laugh. "Oh, please, it's not like that!" she scoffed, but the undeniable blush tinting her cheeks gave the final lie to her denials. "He's not… I mean, I'm not…"

"I never said you were," the Doctor said, waggling his eyebrows at her mercilessly as her blush deepened. "But you just did."

"No, I didn't!" Suzee shrilled, abandoning the half-aligned prism in its unsecured casing to flee across the small room to the antimatter refractor. "We're just friends. Crewmates. That's all!"

"That's not what Catalina says," the Doctor said conversationally, keeping his eyes fixed nonchalantly on the deutronium diode gauges he was adjusting.

Suzee nearly concussed herself on one of the antimatter transistor coils as she swung around to stare at the Doctor in astonishment.

"Catalina!"

"That's the one!"

"How do you know Catalina!"

"She introduced herself four point eight seven minutes ago."

"You mean… she's here? And you can see her? How… how…" Suzee shook her head. "How!"

It was the Doctor's turn to scoff.

"Cat here is Saturnian, and I'm an expert in sonic technology. We were bound to run into each other eventually. More to the point," he tapped the side of his head again. "Mental powers. She entered my auditory and visual ranges when I was adjusting the frequency on the sonic screwdriver in the medlab. And let me tell you, she hasn't shut up since – No, sorry, of course, I'm very interested!" he assured the empty air two paces to the left (then glanced back at Suzee and gave her a furtive little shake of the head.)

"This is incredible!" Suzee exclaimed, ignoring his pleading look. "I haven't been able to communicate with Cat since just before we crash landed on that planet! I've missed her so much…"

It hadn't occurred to her just how true that was until she was surprised to feel tears pricking at her eyes. Suzee wasn't the sort to cry. She was too practical for that; the more emotional she became, the more she tended to hold her feelings in check and hide them. But Catalina had been her best friend all her life, and being mentally linked, they had always been there for each other; despite all of the irreplaceable friends she'd made since coming aboard the Christa, in a way she'd never felt more alone than she had these past few months.

"Well, she has been here with you all this time," the Doctor assured her with a small smile, which widened as he added, "And according to her, Mr. Dreamboat up in the medlab is much more than just another crewmate to you."

Suzee's face closed down and became guarded as something in her chest warmed and tightened. Frustrated, she began opening the flux capacitor valves with more force than was strictly necessary. Why was she letting herself get distracted like this?

"It wouldn't work," she grudgingly assented. "We're from two different worlds – two different _dimensions_ _._ And… he's got Elmira," she added, then bit her lip at the nasty edge of jealousy she could hear in her own voice. She shoved the emotion down and away. "Someday we're going to make it back to the Sol system and get off of this ship. He'll go back to Starcademy and I'll have to go home." Her hands stilled over the last valve, fingers wilting. Then she gripped it hard and gave it an almost vicious twist. "There's no point in anybody getting attached."

"Bit too late for that, I'm afraid…" the Doctor muttered _sotto voce_ _._

"What?" Suzee called, losing the Doctor's quiet words over the rising thrum of the engines.

"Nothing at all!" the Doctor called blithely back.

He finished aligning the baryon compression module as she moved back towards the prism, then turned suddenly to catch Suzee by the shoulder. Startled, she looked up and met those ageless eyes once more. And even though he was a complete stranger, it felt like he was like a big brother, and a best friend and a wise grandfather to her all at once.

"What…"

"You know," he said, "even if all of that is true, maybe that doesn't mean you should be avoiding him – or these feelings you keep trying to box up and pack away. Maybe having a time limit doesn't mean you shouldn't try. Maybe it means that you should make the most of the time you have. After all, on balance, you'll always regret the things you didn't do more than the things you did. And take it from me," a measure of hollow sadness entered his stare, "nothing haunts you like regret."

For a moment all Suzee could do was stare into the timeless expanse of his eyes, speechless, drawn like a moth to an open flame. The temptation to pitch herself into his consciousness and explore him was almost overwhelming. Yet she was somehow frightened of the terrible knowledge that had flickered in his gaze when he spoke of regret, and it stopped her in her psychic tracks.

"I saw your ship," she whispered. "I saw what was inside. It's beyond anything I've ever imagined. A technological miracle. And there's something about _you_ _…_ you're not just a normal traveler."

The Doctor was examining her with an almost equal curiosity.

"I don't think you would be either," the Doctor murmured. "I think you could have been amazing, with all of time and space at your fingertips…" his voice trailed off, and he sighed wistfully, turning away.

Suzee blinked several times, uncomprehending.

"Who _are_ you?"

He looked back at her and his eyes gleamed. "I'm the Doctor."

"Doctor who?"

He winked at her. "Exactly!"

Then, in a burst of energy, he leapt forward, slapped her on the shoulder and whirled her around just in time for her to squawk in alarm and pull the protomix turbine lever back into position half a second before it shifted catastrophically into the red zone.

"You're only young once!" he called back, effectively lifting the heavy mood that had descended as he dashed back over to configure the proton-muon bombardment equalizer. "Well, usually – do as I say, not as I do, and all that – but the point is, take some risks! Seize the day! Have a little fun!"

"Yeah right," Suzee tried to laugh it all off, but her mind was whirling, tied up in the enthralling mystery of the Doctor, and the inescapable wisdom of what he had said. "That's the trouble, it isn't fun, it's confusing and overwhelming and scary. And Radu is the least scary guy you could imagine – he's sweet and thoughtful, and funny, but in a shy sort of way that's… and… and…" She huffed. "… and I don't know what I'm saying. I don't know why I'm telling you all of this."

"Because you've wanted to tell somebody for a long time. You're just telling the wrong person."

"You may be right. About a lot of things. But if I just wanted to have fun, I'd let Harlan…" Suddenly she gasped, horrified, and darted her eyes around the engine room. "Oh no, Harlan… Cat, if you can hear me, I swear I was just playing around, and so was he!"

"Yeeees… she's going to want a word with you about that in the near future. Well, more than one word, actually… well, a bit of a monologue, all told…" The Doctor cringed away from the empty air a few paces to his left and shot Suzee a worried look as he rubbed one ear against the pain of an inaudible racket. "I think a bit of abject groveling might be in order… or on second thought, you might just consider moving dimensions permanently…"

Suddenly the room rocked and swiveled under their feet.

" _Compost to engineering!"_ came Commander Goddard's voice through the com. _"Suzee, how's it coming?"_

"Almost there!" she shouted, stumbling as the whole ship jerked and swerved against the gravimetric currents.

" _We need that hyperdrive online, pronto!"_

"You heard the Dad!" the Doctor exclaimed, leaping over the intake conduits and throwing both ignition levers with an energetic flare. "Ah, well, I'm sure it will all work out in the end!"

"You are?" Suzee said hopefully.

"Usually does, one way or another" the Doctor's shrug was not encouraging. "Except, of course, when it doesn't."

.

* * *

 **TBC**

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* * *

 **A/n: If you review, Radu promises to bring you a teddy bear he found floating in deep space – think of the biologically engineered space virus it's carrying as a bonus!**


	4. Chapter 4

**Disclaimer: Not mine, not for sale, pop goes the weasel!**

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* * *

 **Chapter 4**

* * *

"Was I complaining about being bored?" Harlan banked sharply, passing so close to another shrieking wave fragment that the gravimetric halo clipped the starboard wing, sending the ship rocked violently. "Bored is great! Fantastic! Remind me never to complain about being bored again!"

Another wave fragment skimmed the ship's underbelly as Harlan pulled up sharply, barely managing to ride over the wave of energetic destruction. The deck bucked under their feet. The inertial dampers clearly couldn't keep up with the violent acrobatics he was employing to keep them one step ahead of destruction. It was becoming clear that, while they were keeping just ahead of the wave fragments radiating from the event horizon of the cosmic string filament, there was no way they were going to have enough room to break free of the gravity well on the merit of the sublight engines.

He had to keep them in one piece until Suzee could initialize the hyperdrive. Whether or not he _could_ remained to be seen.

"Shields down to twenty-seven percent!" Bova called from where he was clinging to the tactical station for dear life.

"That was too close, Mr. Band!" Goddard barked over Harlan's shoulder as the floor finally stopped rocking wildly.

"I'm doing my best, Commander" Harlan exclaimed, "but without navigation I might as well be flying blind!"

"Yeah, well, if nothing else, maybe this will finally teach you to appreciate Radu as your navigator."

"Oh sure," Bova snapped moodily, "we're all going to be shredded to free-floating atoms, but at least Harlan will be overflowing with brotherly love for the whole two minutes we have left to live. That makes it all worth while."

"Don't hold your breath!" Harlan said, pulling up hard to dodge between two more streaming whips of light flailing from the center of the twisting, gnashing knot of cosmic energy. "If Radu were up here doing his job instead of taking a snooze in the medlab, we'd be out of this jam by now!"

"Now is not the time for your attitude, Band!" Goddard warned.

"He can't help being sick," Bova added, shifting the crystal shafts in a desperate attempt to boost shield strength.

"I know!" Harlan snapped. "I know that… He's just getting on my nerves. I mean, more than usual. Him and Suzee…" he was interrupted as he had to barrel role the ship and take an alarming vertical dip to avoid two colliding asteroids that had also been pulled into the singularity's wake. "He's got a girl that really likes him, and she's right here in front of him, and he won't do anything about it! He doesn't know what it's like to lose the person… the person you…"

Commander Goddard heaved a long-suffering sigh and rolled his eyes, as though he might find some patience with these teenage dramas lurking on the ceiling.

"Harlan, we all know how much you care about Catalina, and we _will_ get her back," he snapped, fed up. "But if you don't concentrate _right now_ on flying this ship, there won't _be_ a ship to bring her back to!"

"Man, you don't get it either," Harlan turned accusingly towards Goddard. Though he was aware that this was neither the time nor place, the stress of the situation seemed to have opened a floodgate, and he was too distracted with flying the ship out of a death-defying, impossible situation to wedge it closed again. "You and Miss Davenport are so out of touch that you don't even realize you like each other, even though it's _so_ obvious!"

"Mr. Band," Goddard said warningly.

"Well it's true! But even though you can't possibly relate, you're so hung up on telling us what we're doing wrong – "

"Mr. Band!"

"No, don't interrupt! Listen for once! You need to realize that – "

"Harlan!"

"Look out!" Bova shouted.

Harlan whirled back towards the view screen to see the white crest of a massive wave fragment, writhing with molecule-slicing energies, coming straight at them. Too late to avoid it, too late to outrun it.

Harlan said a word that would have earned him ten demerits if Miss Davenport had heard it.

"Aw, man!" Bova concurred, then squeezed his eyes shut, charged his antennas and sent a desperate bolt of electricity surging into the shield controls just as the wave fragment hit the Christa head on.

.

* * *

The engine room heaved so violently that for a moment the local gravity seemed to shift by ninety degrees. Everything that wasn't nailed down slammed violently into the wall. The hyperdrive matrix exploded in a shower of sparks and a coolant conduit cracked, spewing a fog of liquid nitrogen into the air.

Suzee couldn't see what had happened to the Doctor. But at the moment she wasn't in any position to worry about anyone but herself.

Just audible over her scream of pain as her body slammed against the unforgiving metal was the musical tinkling of the deutronium prism rattling in the casing she'd forgotten to secure. Almost in slow motion, it slid sideways and, flashing brilliantly as it tumbled end over end, crashed fantastically to the floor, shattering into a million little glittering shards.

.

* * *

Rosie heard Radu moan in pain. It was the first sign of life he'd shown, and even though it meant her friend was hurting, she would have been thrilled to hear it.

Except for two things.

One was that she was currently sprawled on the medlab floor, clinging to the sonic screwdriver and trying to keep Miss Davenport's head out of the way of flying objects as the ship shuddered and bucked, seeming to slam in ten different directions at once.

The other was that from where she lay she could just see that the monitors showed Radu had gone suddenly, terribly cold, despite the heat she had been feeding into his heretofore receptive body.

"Oh, no, no, no!" Rosie cried, trying to stand to reach him, only to fall back to the floor, helpless to do anything but cling to Miss Davenport and ride out the crash. "Radu!"

His skin was starred with frost, and his panting, shallow breaths steamed with cold. The little puffs of white smoke seemed to grow smaller with each labored exhale.

Whatever was wrong with him had clearly run its course.

He was dying.

 **.**

* * *

 **TBC**

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* * *

 **A/n: If you leave a review, Harlan will tell the Hil to worship you as their next god-king (right up until they sacrifice you to the Hraruru).**


	5. Chapter 5

**Disclaimer: I'm not saying it! You can't make me! I won't do it! …oh alright, I don't own any of it. Sigh. You're killing me here.**

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* * *

 **Chapter 5**

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* * *

Harlan pulled himself upright against the helm console, astonished to discover the ship somehow _not_ slashed to pieces in a fireball of explosive decompression.

"Thelma! Damage report!" Commander Goddard called from behind him, sounding a bit breathless, which Harlan found pretty terrifying. Goddard was a Stardog; nothing rattled a Stardog.

"Hull breaches on two decks," Thelma replied pleasantly, her cervos clicking and beeping and grinding as she tried to bring the ship's systems back into order.

"Seal off damaged sections until we can spare power for repairs and get those blasted inertial dampers working properly! Good work, Bova," he added, his voice reassuringly firm once more. "Quick thinking, using that electrical bolt to pull one last energy surge from the shields."

"Yeah, but it fried the relays, Commander!" Bova exclaimed miserably. "Shields are gone! One more direct hit and we're toast!"

"Nothing else is hitting my ship!" Harlan shouted defiantly, gripping the control crystals and gunning the sublight thrusters to full.

.

* * *

Miss Davenport woke with a groan to find the ship half shaking itself apart and the medlab in chaotic disarray all around her. She sat bolt upright, her overwhelming disapproval of both chaos and disarray temporarily overriding her overwhelming phobia of space travel and everything it entailed. She looked up to see Rosie braced precariously against the exam bed, a wash of intense heat coming off of her, and a look of determination on her face the likes of which she had never suspected Rosie was capable.

"Rosie?" she said, half a question, half an exclamation as she gripped the edge of the exam bed and haul herself uncertainly to her feet on the vibrating deck. A gasp escaped her when she saw the state Radu was in, the ice crystals forming on his skin and hair and the familiar urge to faint her way out of a terrible situation faded in the face of the immediate danger to one of her charges. "What's happened to him!"

Rosie spared her the barest flick of a glance.

"Miss Davenport! Hurry!" Rosie shoved the sonic device she was holding into the vice-principal's hand. "Take this, hold it here, press the button in twenty second intervals!" The hand she'd been using to do that job herself Rosie now brought down to join her other hand, which was pressed against Radu's chest and glowing like a miniature sun.

Stunned, Miss Davenport unthinkingly did as she was told.

"The Doctor said not to go above 43 degrees, but I think I understand the principle of what he was trying to do! It's the sound! You see? Er… I mean, 'hear', I guess… I mean…"

"Rosie, what are you talking about?"

"It's something he's hearing!" Rosie exclaimed. "Hearing is the primary sense in Andromendans, like sight is for humans, or smell is for dogs, except Andromendan hearing is way more powerful than any of them!" she explained, her voice shrill and fast, but sure. "I read about it in one of the books you found in the cargo hold, Miss Davenport! Sometimes humans can have seizures if they see certain patterns of light or color! I think Radu is hearing something we can't hear, and that's what's causing this! There's no infection, no injury, nothing… that's got to be it! The Doctor realized it too, just from a glance! That's why he gave me that sonic tool! We've got to numb Radu's auditory nerve and break up the subzero cold front he's generating!"

Miss Davenport scowled, trying to keep up. "Let's say you're right, Rosie. If this is the correct treatment, then why is he getting worse?" she demanded severely.

"I don't understand it!" Rosie wailed. "It was working, he was improving and stabilizing! Unless… something must have changed! The auditory stimulus must have altered when the ship was hit! So…" Her face screwed up with fear and indecision for a long moment, then cleared. "So we have to alter the treatment. Miss Davenport, please increase the interval from 20 to 25 seconds. I'm going to slowly increase my heat wave from 43 to 47 degrees."

Miss Davenport shook her head, perplexed. Having been thrown into the middle of a volatile situation with no frame of reference from which to take charge, she had thought it only wise to comply – but the idea of leaving one of _these_ students was in charge of the situation tied a cold little knot of worry in her gut. After all, these were the misfits, the space cases, the failures amongst the failures of Starcademy.

But she had no better ideas, and it was visibly clear that Radu was worsening.

"Rosie, are you sure about this?" Miss Davenport said quietly.

"No!" Rosie had tears in her eyes, but more determination shined there than ever. "If we get it wrong by even a small margin, it could kill him! But if we don't do something, he will freeze to death in a few seconds! I've got to try!" She looked up pleadingly. "I know I'm right, Miss Davenport! Please, trust me!"

Miss Davenport pursed her lips, then nodded sharply.

"Twenty-five seconds," she confirmed, and put word to action, as Rosie smiled tightly and began to glow red hot with the effort of precisely controlling the burning heat she was blasting into her classmate.

.

* * *

"Suzee? Suzee!"

Suzee moaned. Her head swam like her brain was floating in a fish tank, and when she drew a breath to answer, an angry stab of agony lanced through her chest.

The Doctor emerged through the hazy swirl of nitrogen fog to crouch down beside her.

"Suzee, are you alright?"

 _Cracked ribs_ _,_ she guessed dizzily. Her body felt like one giant bruise.

"I'm fine," she lied. "Check the prism…"

They both looked up at the empty prism casing, then down at the glittering shards littering the floor.

"Sonic resonance vaporization," the Doctor informed her grimly. "The wave fragment must have weakened its molecular structure."

"What are we going to do?" Suzee gasped, her mind running through the available options and coming up bleakly short. "Without the deutronium prism, the hyperdrive is out of commission! There's no way we can achieve faster-than-light breakaway acceleration!"

"Don't be silly!" The Doctor leapt to his feet and began tinkering with the control modules. "There's always a way, it's just a matter of finding it!"

Suzee tried to stand, found her legs wouldn't do what she told them, and sagged back against the wall. The blow she'd taken when the ship was hit must have left her with a nasty case of synaptic shock; until her neurons sorted themselves out, she wasn't going to be able to so much as walk on her own, much less perform emergency repairs. All she could do was trust the Doctor.

"Ooh, I've got it!" the Doctor exclaimed as he pulled off the galvanic matrix panel and began rearranging isolinear rods into a delta pattern. "I can reroute the thermal compression fluid through the baryon splitters and reverse the polarity of the neutron flow! Been a while since I did that, might be a bit rusty, but it should harness the accumulated hypercharge in the protomix! It could be _just_ enough for a hyperjump burst. Just enough to clear the fragment! Yes!"

"No!" Suzee exclaimed. "I already thought of that, but it would blow the gaskets in the ion stabilization pumps! This whole room would be flooded with xenon gas!"

"Only until the protomix resolidifies and the turbines reactivate," the Doctor countered. "Don't worry, work those fantastic gills of yours and you'll be fine!"

"But Doctor! You won't!"

.

* * *

Harlan banked left, pulled up, shot forward, then slammed the reverse thrusters to full, rolled right, and just barely came through the latest lattice of wave fragments. More of them were coming, faster and faster, bigger and bigger, the farther they were pulled in into the cosmic string fragment. The core loomed large on the view screen. And so did another wave fragment.

It was enormous. Harlan tried to dodge, but the fragment shifted at the last second, blocking the escape trajectory he'd devised. He couldn't see a way out at sublight speed, but no matter how often he punched the hyperdrive, there was no response.

"Hyperdrive still inactive, Commander!" he cried.

"It's coming right at us!" Bova shouted.

Goddard reached past him and punched the com.

"Engine room! Hyperdrive! Now, Suzee! _Now_ _!_ "

"Hold on!" Harlan shouted as the inescapable, white hot slash of killing energy filled the screen

.

* * *

Suzee struggled to regain her feet, but her limbs were numb and all she could manage to do was topple sideways, one hand extended in a futile gesture.

The Doctor had reconfigured the splitter setup almost before she could blink, and had already hefted the final pair of interlink cables. Suzee could see the compression fluid bubbling madly in its tank on the far wall, building to critical pressure. She looked desperately up at this mad stranger she'd just met, horrified by what he was about to do to save them.

"Doctor, don't!

He threw her another cheeky wink and jammed the cables together.

" _Geronimo_ _!"_

There was a blinding flash, and the room was suddenly washed with thick, unbreathable toxic smoke.

.

* * *

The Christa's wings folded tight as the hyperdrive engines flared to life. With a thunderous blast, she shot forward faster than a beam of light, just as the wave fragment crashed through the spot she had vacated like a wall of chewing, shredding teeth. In the blink of an eye, the monstrous maw of the cosmic string fragment fell away behind her, and the Christa soared like a speeding photon through the stars, free and clear and still mostly in one piece.

"Yes!" Harlan shouted, jumping down from the helm with a whoop of exhilaration to high-five Bova and receive a slap on the back from Commander Goddard. He was going to have a few stories of his own to tell when he got home. He knew his dad would have been proud.

.

* * *

"It's working, Miss Davenport!" Rosie cried. Miss Davenport could see tears rising as steam off of her superheated cheeks, even as the ice limning Radu's evaporated away. "I wasn't sure, after I improvised on the Doctor's instructions, but I think he's going to be okay!"

Miss Davenport could feel herself smiling in spite of herself. She laid a hand on her shoulder.

"Rosie, one day you'll make a wonderful doctor yourself," she said approvingly.

Then she bit her lip to keep from squealing in agony, and she snatched her singed hand back off of Rosie's sizzling hot shoulder.

.

* * *

Suzee coughed as she waved the last wisps of the smoke away. The lack of turbulence suggested that they had cleared the gravity well of the cosmic string fragment. The turbines had vented most of the xenon gas out into space, and her gills tasted an almost normal oxygen-nitrogen balance in the air. The numbness had leeched out of her body and except for a sharp tenderness in her ribs and an ache in the side of her head, she could move almost normally again.

It would all seem to have worked out. If not for the slumped, unmoving body crumpled against the far wall of the engine room, cables still clutched in hand.

.

* * *

 **TBC**

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* * *

 **A/n: If you leave a review, Bova will cook you something really interesting (the fact that he found it on the ground on an alien planet is entirely beside the point – he said he'd cook it for you, he never told you to eat it).**


	6. Chapter 6

**Disclaimer: You know what goes here, don't act like you don't.**

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* * *

 **Chapter 6**

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"Doctor!" Suzee cried, rushing to his side. His skin had gone clammy and he wasn't breathing. Xenon gas was horribly toxic to most species in the universe. Tears welled up in her eyes. "Oh, no…"

With a loud gasp, the Doctor sat up so fast that he and Suzee nearly knocked heads.

"Doctor!" Suzee gasped as well, helping him as he shook himself briskly and stood up. "I thought…"

"That I was dead?" the Doctor coughed, then grinned at her. "I had a friend once, Sarah Jane, who was always making that very same mistake."

"But the gas! How did you…?"

"Respiratory bypass," he said a little smugly, thumping his chest, and then giving another grimacing cough to clear any traces of xenon. "Handy in a tight squeeze – or a horribly toxic, unbreathable atmosphere, as the case may be."

Suzee didn't know what to say, so instead she threw her arms around his neck and hugged him tight in spite of the pain in her ribs – both for saving them, and for not dying in the process. Somehow, though they had just met, she knew that it would have been a terrible, terrible mistake for the universe to have lost him today.

The Doctor laughed and gave her a quick squeeze, then twisted and spun out of her reach, clapping his hands together briskly.

"Alright, now that we've had our fun, let's go sort out your not-boyfriend."

.

* * *

Commander Goddard had already returned with Harlan and Bova by the time the door whooshed open to admit Suzee and the Doctor in the medlab. Thelma was puttering around, putting the equipment back in order, and Rosie stood over Radu, still watching him like a hawk, even though he was no longer trying to morph into a humanoid icicle.

"What I don't understand is how a cosmic string fragment snuck up on us like that," the Commander was saying.

"Yeah, all of the Christa's sensor alarms should have been screaming at us for hours before we got close enough to get caught in its gravitational field," Bova agreed. "It's like it just appeared right on top of us."

"That's impossible!" Rosie exclaimed. "Even I know that!"

"Didn't stop it from happening," Harlan pointed out sardonically.

"Well then where in the world did it come from?" Miss Davenport shrilled, more than a little worried that more cataclysmic interstellar forces were planning to sneak up on them in deep space.

"I'm afraid I might know the answer," the Doctor interjected a tad sheepishly. He had just helped Suzee onto the secondary exam bed and left her to her to an uncertain fate as Rosie approached her with the humming macroscanner and a microcellular phase oscillator. "When I landed inside your ship, I had no idea she was equipped with time drives. This area of space," he waved his hands around demonstratively, "is riddled with minor gravimetric distortions – weak spots in the fabric of reality. Your scanners probably detected them, but they're usually nothing to write home about. Trouble is, one reason the Type-40 TARDIS was taken out of commission, you see, it tends to react, well, rather _unpredictably_ within an overlapping sixteenth-dimensional choronodyne matrix, even one generated by intersecting with a primitive, inoperative derelict like the one you're carrying..."

"Unpredictably?" Goddard growled. "As unpredictably, as, say, gouging a hole in the space-time continuum and yanking a cosmic string fragment out into our reality practically on top of us?"

"Well, anything's possible, isn't it?" the Doctor replied defensively. "That is generally what's implied by 'unpredictable'! But hey! All's well that ends well! The Christa's still space worthy, crew all still in one piece, no limbs missing, all still breathing! Speaking of which, I trust our Andromedan friend is holding up alright?"

"For now," Rosie reported as she stepped back and let Suzee climb up off the exam bed with a sigh of relief, her ribs and head healed good as new by the Christa's advanced morphic medical technology. "He's stopped freezing, but nothing else has changed. He still won't wake up."

"'Course not! The sonic screwdriver only eliminated the symptom, not the cause. Ah, well, best get him sorted…"

"Hold it!" Goddard snapped. "You just told me that your mere presence here is what put this ship and crew in danger, you left a child in charge of a life or death situation and you ran off to engineering against my express orders to stay here. I don't know how you got here, Doctor, but you can just pack up and leave the same way you came!"

"But Commander, what about Radu?" Rosie cried. "I mean, yeah, it was scary and I wasn't sure I could do it… but I did it! And if it hadn't been for the Doctor's help, Radu would already be dead!"

"And he did save the ship," Suzee chimed in, wisely not reminding anyone that he was apparently the one who had endangered the ship in the first place. "He was the one who got the hyperdrive working after the deutronium prism broke…"

"The deutronium prism did _what_?"

"Keep your shirt on, Dad," the Doctor interrupted, eyes glittering playfully as he tried manfully and failed to keep a smug little smile from tugging at his lips. "No need to panic. I happen to recall that I have a lump of deutronium crystalline ore in the TARDIS. Been using it as a door stop in the library for ages. It's hard to find a good doorstop these days, but I do believe I could spare it for a good cause! Thelma…" he looked around.

"Yes?" Thelma said, appearing at his left shoulder as he peered over his right. The Doctor jumped.

"Ha! Right! Hello! Now, you can cut the crystal to the correct dimensions, can't you?"

"Not a problem," Thelma replied helpfully.

"There's a good Techno Human EmuLating MAchine!" He put an arm around Thelma's shoulder and cocked an eyebrow at the Commander. "So that's, what? Three saves in a row?" he asked with not a little sass in his voice. "I do believe that equals a pass, don't you?"

"Please, Commander?" Suzee said from his shoulder. "I just know he can cure Radu!"

It didn't take Andromedan ears to hear Goddard's teeth grinding together.

"Alright, hot shot," he sighed at last, gesturing towards Radu. "Last chance. So what's wrong with him?"

"What do you mean, what's wrong with him?" the Doctor exclaimed. "Isn't it obvious by now?"

"If it was obvious, I wouldn't have asked!"

The Doctor gave Goddard a strange look, as though he couldn't figure out how he managed to dress himself in the morning.

" _Clearly_ it's a psionic feedback loop stemming from an unresolved interspecies Yon-sa-ri bonding that's generating progressive ion imbalance in his internal atmosphere." When he was met by a chorus of blank, uncomprehending stares, he threw his hands up. "Blimey, what do they teach you in that school of yours?"

"If you could please explain…" Goddard started.

"I just did!"

"Well pretend we're idiots," Goddard ground out, "and try again!"

The Doctor raised an eyebrow, as though to say that he wouldn't have to do much pretending, then blew out a heavy sigh and straightened his bow tie.

"I knew all those hours playing Chinese checkers with Socrates in the Grecian Agora would pay off someday," he murmured, then cleared his throat loudly. "Alright, children!" he exclaimed, "Class is in session! Rosie, dear," he pointed at her as he paced around the exam bed and began scanning Radu with his sonic screwdriver once again. "You treated Radu! And a fine job you did of it too, ignoring the instructions, saying sod all to the plan and plunging in head first and blindfolded! Well done! I never do it any other way – it's the secret to my success! So tell the class, why did my sonic screwdriver help to stabilize his condition?"

"It overpowered Radu's auditory nerve?"

"Right in one!" the Doctor beamed. "Andromedan hearing," he continued, warming to the sound of his own voice, "is one of the most remarkable products of evolution I have ever seen – and that is _really_ saying something. Tympanic membranes like temple gongs stretched across hollow sinuses on either side of the skull, which act as resonance chambers, hooked up to a state-of-the art auditory nerve matrix chock full of more dendritic receptor than there are visible stars in the sky! Just beautiful – no, I mean really, totally, scrumptiously gorgeous… well, you get the idea. And when a species spends twenty thousand years evolving a biological work of art that specialized, it's hardly a wonder that their entire physiology would wind up centered on it."

"Okay, wait," Harlan said, holding up a hand, "are you saying he's sick because of something he's _hearing_?"

"Point to the cocky one!" the Doctor exclaimed happily, pleased to see his sojourn as an educator was so far a rousing success.

"Hey!" Harlan protested. The rest of the crew gave him a look, and he shrugged and conceded, "Yeah, alright."

"But what is it?" Miss Davenport exclaimed, sticking precautionary fingers in her ears. "What is he hearing that's made him ill?"

"Well, as to that!" the Doctor chaffed his hands together just a bit too gleefully, "How much do you know about Andromedan pair bonding?"

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 **TBC**

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 **A/n: Just got off the phone with the Doctor, and he promises that if you leave a review, he'll have UNIT remove all the listening devices they hid around your house after you broke into the Black Archive last week. Nothing he can do about the memory wipe, I'm afraid…**


	7. Chapter 7

**Disclaimer: Space Cases and Doctor Who belong to not me; this story is not for sale or profit (behold, this is what surrender to the inevitable looks like).**

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 **Chapter 7**

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"Pair bonding!" Suzee blurted in surprise.

"What's pair bonding?" Rosie asked.

"Sort of like _mating_ ," Harlan smirked wickedly, "only more lovey-dovey."

"Pair bonding is sort of like dating, or getting married," Goddard corrected, shooting Harlan a quelling look. "A formalized courtship ritual within a given biocultural context."

Suzee's eyes darted towards the exam bed, where Radu remained unmoved, impassive and blissfully unaware of the potentially rather sensitive turn of subject, then away, color rising to her cheeks. She was thinking just about the same thing as everyone else in the room, except perhaps the Doctor – who knew what he was thinking – _where is he going with this, and do I really want to know?_

"Dad's got the right of it! Except that when it comes to Andromedans," the Doctor explained, "it's more than exchanging gold rings and letterman jackets. It's much more, well, _physiological_."

"What do you mean?" Bova asked, scientifically fascinated, though he still couldn't quite bring himself to look in Radu's direction any more than anyone else in the room.

"Ever hear the old saying about 'two hearts beating as one'?" the Doctor quipped. "Well, for Andromedans, it's not just a romantic cliché, it's a biological fact. Their hearing instinctively becomes fixated on their little paramour's biorhythms – particularly the heartbeat. It's the Andromedan version of staring longingly at someone across a crowded room. And because their physiology is so intrinsically tied to their hearing…"

"You mean, their heartbeats sync up?" Harlan tried.

"More than that, isn't it?" Suzee said thoughtfully, " _All_ their biopatterns must sync up. That's why his biostats are so out of joint. And that's why the scanner says nothing's wrong – because it's a naturally occurring body bioprocess!"

The Doctor was beaming proudly at their deductive capabilities (something this group was not at all used to seeing from a teacher).

"That genius is showing out!" he said cheekily. "Andromedans call it Yon-sa-ri, which crudely translates to something like, 'the blessed bonding by beneficent Yon, great high god of unity, of my humble self to the beatific drumming of the one I treasure most' – you can see why they shorten it."

"Two hearts beating as one!" Rosie grinned, temporarily caught up in the aforementioned romantic cliché. "Oh, how sweet!"

"Except when it's not," the Doctor replied conversationally. "Ever had a crush on somebody who didn't like you back? Unrequited love can cause a metabolic rain storm like you wouldn't believe – leaves an Andromedan feeling a bit under the weather for a while. Literally in their case! Ha!"

"So you're saying that Radu is in a coma on the point of death… because he has a broken heart?" Davenport asked, not even trying to keep the skepticism out of her voice.

"No!" the Doctor shot her a quizzical look, as though her density were so unbelievable as to be impressive. Then he shrugged. "Well, not really. Sort of, but not. Rather the opposite, in fact… except not exactly opposite… sort of more catty-corner, really..." the Doctor tried to diagram what he was saying with his hands and then threw them up in defeat. "He's not sick because he's been rejected, he's sick because his mind _thinks_ he's been rejected, while his body _knows_ that he hasn't."

Comprehension dawned on Goddard's face, and he glanced around the room. The Doctor noticed – he seemed to notice everything – and gave him a quasi-respectful nod for having been the first to figure it out.

"So that's how you knew he had a non-Andromedan girlfriend…"

"Well spotted, Dad – er, _Commander_ ," the Doctor replied, giving him a half mocking little salute.

"Oh…ohhhh!" Rosie exclaimed. "You're saying that he likes somebody so much that he hassynchronized with their biopattern – but it's not an Andromedan biopattern!"

"Why should that matter?" Harlan wondered, his brow screwed up as he tried to follow the conversation.

"Well, think about it," Rosie said. "What if your human body suddenly had, say, my biopattern as a Mercurian? Your temperature could shoot up by over 100 degrees. A human body subjected to that kind of heat would be dead in a minute!" She pointed towards the exam bed. "If the Doctor is right, then the same kind of thing is happening to Radu! His biochemistry is altering to alien patterns that his body can't cope with, and it's hurting him." Her face crumpled. "Oh, that's so sad…"

"Typical," Bova agreed philosophically.

"That's crazy!" Harlan exclaimed, unaccountably angry. "What kind of stupid species has that kind of kill switch? Over a stupid crush! I mean, don't they have any self-control?"

"Mr. Band!" Miss Davenport shrilled, inwardly happy to have a target upon which to vent the frustration she was feeling in the face of so many unknown factors outside of her control. "If you ever intend to become a Stardog, you are going to have to learn to be more open to the cultural differences of other species!"

"He _does_ have a point, though, Mommy Dearest," the Doctor pointed out.

" _Mommy Dearest?!_ " Miss Davenport cried apoplectically.

The Doctor ignored her fuming and turned to Harlan. "On your average given Tuesday, yes, of course he'd be able to control it. Think of Yon-sa-ri like…" he smirked. "Like wanting to _kiss_ somebody, so much that you almost can't help it. But just because you want to doesn't mean you have to, because you've got _self-control_."

Every teenager in the room suddenly took a distinct interest in the deck plates. The Doctor snickered, then cleared his throat, clearly attempting to act his age (which was more of a feat than anyone else in the room might have guessed).

"The Andromedan autonomic nervous system _does_ have fail safes, you see," he went on pedantically. "The same sort that, say…" he reached into his jacket pocket, rummaged around for a moment, and whipped out a latex balloon, "won't let you hold your breath until you suffocate." He swiftly inflated it, pinching off the end and holding it up demonstratively. "Ever tried it? Can't be done! Oh, you might render yourself a bit dizzy, maybe a tad delirious if you're really dedicated – remind me to tell you the story about a breathing contest I once won on Golondan Prime, ended up covered in green paint with a pocket full of marshmallows – er, yes, not important now – the point is, eventually the autonomic nervous system," he relaxed his fingers letting the air out of the balloon, "forces you to breathe."

"So then…" Harlan started slowly. The Doctor nodded encouragingly, a hopeful expression on his face. "…why is he sick?" The Doctor's face fell.

"We're still missing something," Suzee guessed, giving Harlan a pointed look.

"No, _we're_ not. You lot are," the Doctor retorted superciliously. "I'm just trying to be a good teacher. Socrates never had to deal with a crowd this tough, I don't mind telling you!"

"Something must have overridden his autonomic defenses," Bova chimed in.

"Good! Yes! Point to the stag beetle!" the Doctor exclaimed, dashing over to tweak one of Bova's antennae, and getting a snap of static electricity and a baleful glare for his trouble. "Ow! Anyway, what if I reminded you that the higher-than-average density of the Andromedan molecular structure creates a resonant lattice that generates a low level psionic field?"

"You mean, Radu has psychic abilities?" Rosie wondered.

"They would have to be really low level, if I can't detect it," Suzee chimed in, looking over at Radu with renewed fascination.

"More like he has a built in psychic receiver," Goddard clarified. "The Spung used to take advantage of it during the war, by sending their orders to the Andromedan fleet via psionic wave. The UPP didn't have the technology to intercept psychic transmissions back then. It was _annoyingly_ effective."

"Hey, that makes sense!" Bova exclaimed. "Remember when Radu saved the gerkel? He knew it was in trouble inside its egg because it communicated with him telepathically!"

"And that must be why he was able to receive that psychic message from Elmira," Harlan concurred. "He was the only one she could be sure would receive it."

"Now we're getting somewhere!" the Doctor exclaimed, pulling a handkerchief out of his coat and wiping his brow as though he'd just been subjected to a great deal of intense manual labor while dragging them all onto roughly the same page.

"So you're saying that Radu is receiving some kind of subliminal psionic message that's bypassing his autonomic defenses, and because he really, really likes the person that's transmitting them, he's instinctively synced up to her biopattern, which is incompatible with his Andromedan physiology and is generating a fatal imbalance in his internal atmosphere…" Suzee paused for breath and felt a sizzle of anger eating its way to the surface of her thoughts. She'd never really had a chance to get to know Elmira, but right now she was ready to dislike her on principle. _How could she do that to him!_

The Doctor looked sharply round at her and then suddenly just _stopped_ , staring at her intently. The fidgety stranger's abrupt stillness was so jarring that it commanded the attention of every eye in the room as he studied Suzee. Suzee suddenly felt very small under the weight of his attention.

Slowly, he put the balloon to his mouth again, inflated it, and then deftly tied a knot in the end. He held it up, watching her closely.

"It was all subconsciously done, I'm sure," he said. "But either way," he his fingers shifted and the balloon burst, startling everyone, "the outcome is the same."

"So, then…" Suzee shook herself, resisting the Doctor's penetrating stare, "…we just need to find Elmira and make her stop broadcasting, right? Or…" she turned to Rosie, "what do we know about Spung biopatterns? Maybe if we can figure out exactly how Elmira's biology is affecting him…"

"Oh, Suzee…" The Doctor said quietly, shaking his head, earning a frustrated look from Suzee and a general susurration of confusion from the rest of the group. "I guess we really are all fools in love. Even geniuses. Perhaps especially geniuses."

"What?"

"Aren't you forgetting? Andromedan pair bonding is based on _hearing_."

One by one, lightbulbs were visibly blinking on over peoples' heads.

"It can't be Elmira," Bova said.

"Because she's not here," Rosie concurred.

"And no matter how strong the psychic suggestion…" Miss Davenport mused.

"It would amount to nothing, if he wasn't close enough to hear a heartbeat." Goddard finished knowingly.

"Which means… it has to be somebody on the ship…"

"Somebody with psychic powers…"

"…and powerful enough to override the brain's and take over…"

And like a wind-up clockwork mechanism, all heads in the room turned slowly toward where Suzee was standing stock still, an expression of pure astonishment on her face.

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 **TBC**

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 **A/n: It's the rejoicing festival on Saturn this week! So Catalina promised me that if you leave a review, she'll come and kick you really hard in the shin so you don't have to participate!**


	8. Chapter 8

**Disclaimer: If I did own Space Cases, it would still be on the air today, with six spinoffs, a radio program, a thriving book series and two computer games… kinda like Doctor Who… which I also don't own… I don't want to talk about this anymore!**

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 **Chapter 8**

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"But… but… but…!" Suzee spluttered, aghast, as she realized what they Doctor was saying. "But I'm not! I did't! I wouldn't! I swear!"

" _Purely_ subconscious," the Doctor reiterated. His erratic manner had given way completely to the wise grandfather figure she'd met in the engine room. "You said it yourself. You believe that he cares for someone else; that you're from two different worlds; that it would never work. So you've been suppressing your feelings, stuffing them deep down inside and shutting the door on them, until your metaconscious mind was packed to bursting with unresolved emotion. You're a powerful psychic, Suzee from Yensid," he said sympathetically. "Where did you think it all would go? Eventually, those feelings were always going to start tumbling out of the windows."

"So wait, you're saying it's Suzee's fault that Radu's sick?" Harlan groused, bristling to the damsel's defense. "You're blaming her?"

"Don't be absurd!" the Doctor exclaimed. "It was a psychic suggestion, not mind control. Radu was still in control of himself. But the fact is, he would have had to have… well… not _wanted_ to control himself, if you catch my meaning?"

Blank stares. The Doctor slapped his palm to his forehead and dragged it down his face.

"Seriously…? Oh, for pity's sake, give me a good old-fashioned twentieth century Earth teenager any day, they learned this stuff in the school yard like decent, self-respecting children and understood it without me having to spell it out in alphabet noodles!"

"I believe what the Doctor means is that Mr. Radu has been suppressing his feelings as well," Goddard said quietly, his voice refreshingly matter-of-fact in a sea of awkward tension thick enough to cut with a knife. "He _thought_ he had been rejected, and the repression of his feelings made him that much more vulnerable to subconscious psychic suggestion that told his bioprocess that he _hadn't_ been rejected."

"And all together, they combined powerfully enough to overwhelm his autonomic response," Rosie finished, smiling to herself as she began to understand. "And that left him super vulnerable, so that when his body started syncing up with Suzee's biopattern – sorry Suzee," she said, as Suzee clapped an embarrassed hand over her face, which was almost as red as Rosie's now, " – his built in defense mechanisms didn't stop it! Oh!" she exclaimed, clapping her gloved hands together. "That's why he got worse when we got caught in the string fragment! He didn't know we were in trouble – but _you_ did, Suzee! Your biopattern changed when you were under stress, so his changed too! And you were _injured_ when the wave fragment hit, which changed your biopattern again. That's why the treatment stopped working!" She bounced excitedly on her tip-toes, as though she could barely contain her glee at having solved the mystery. "It all makes sense now!"

"Top marks to you, Doctor," the Doctor congratulated her, giving her a high five.

"Why thank you, Doctor," Rosie replied cheerily.

"I'm sorry, I'm simply having a hard time believing any of this," Miss Davenport sniffed. "I mean, I can certainly believe this group botched something up, but all this talk of pair bonding…" She gave a delicate shiver, her shoulders tensing and her fingers curling as though she'd touched something unpleasant.

"Oh, it's the oldest story in the cosmos, Mommy Dearest!" the Doctor replied. "Boy meets girl, girl plays hard to get, boy thinks he's been rejected, girl sends mixed subpsionic signals to get his attention, boy falls into a metabolically induced meteorological coma… the fairytale practically writes itself!" The Doctor sighed dreamily. "Ah, young love. It's a miracle anybody survives it, really."

"They're children, for goodness sake!" Miss Davenport protested.

"Children have an annoying tendency to grow up, you know," Commander Goddard reminded her stonily, already envisioning with dread the next six years dragging by, riddled with teenage relationship dramas.

"Nasty habit," the Doctor opined. "I don't recommend it. Nothing good ever comes of it."

"Okay, but why now?" Harlan demanded. "I mean, they've been playing these stupid head games for months, so what's changed?"

"What!" Suzee shrilled, beyond mortified by this point. "What! What head games!"

"Come on, don't 'what' me, like you don't know!" Harlan said, half annoyed, but now half laughing too. "All those times you walked into a room and pretended that Radu didn't exist, just so he'd look at you."

"Yeah, and then he pretended he didn't see you, because you were pretending he wasn't there," Bova concurred.

"Even though all he wanted was for _you_ to look at _him_ as much as you wanted _him_ to look at _you_ …" Rosie added.

"Rosie!" Suzee exclaimed at the treachery of her roommate, who held up her hands in a gesture of innocence.

"What?" Rosie asked, trying desperately not to giggle. "I'm naïve, not stupid!"

"And all that time, you were both a pair of subconscious psychic pressure cookers just waiting to explode!" Harlan crossed his arms and shook his head in an infuriatingly superior manner. "Jeez, Suzee, I knew _he_ was an idiot, but I thought _you_ were supposed to be smart."

"Now, now, don't be so hard on her. Interspecies dating on its best day is a tricky game, even for adults," the Doctor's expression became troubled, his eyes widening like a deer caught in the headlights. "Remind me to tell you a story about a woman named River sometime…"

"Yeah, but like I said," Harlan reiterated, "Why now?"

"Hmmm… Can't say for certain, but a little bird told me something about a kiss?" The Doctor glanced at a patch of empty air about two paces to his left, then shot Suzee a knowing look.

"But… but that was just… it was nothing!" Suzee cried, lying through her teeth. "I was just glad he was alright!"

"And he probably knew that," the Doctor said, pointing to his head, " up _here_ _._ But in _here_ _,'_ the Doctor pointed to his chest, "he's still Andromedan."

"So?"

"So, have any of you ever seen him take his gloves off?" the Doctor inquired.

Suzee opened her mouth, then closed it with a click, scowling in confusion. "What?"

The crewmates looked at each other, perplexed yet again.

"The gloves have built-in inertial dampers," Commander Goddard said, but his brow furrowed uncertainly. "Mr. Radu doesn't always know his own strength."

"Is that really the reason?" the Doctor asked. "You don't sound convinced."

"It's true."

"It's also true that Andromedans view exposing skin below the neckline as indecent," the Doctor informed, exasperated. He turned to include Miss Davenport in his pointed look. "If I remember correctly, Starcademy guidelines prohibit additions to the standard uniform unless it is a physical necessity. Isn't it _just_ possible the Andromedan government sent you a tiny little fib along with one of their children, as a way to circumscribe the insular biases of the UPP old boy's club?"

Turning away from the two speechless adults, looking like a cat with a canary feather sticking out of his mouth, rounded on Suzee. "For future reference, anyskin-to-skin contact is considered an intimate gesture amongst Andromedans. A kiss… well," the Doctor glanced Radu with a shrug. "Call it culture shock."

Suzee was blinking too rapidly, her cheeks were fiery red, and her lips were pressed tightly together as though trying to banish the phantom sensory memory of the kiss in question. All in all, she looked like her head might explode.

"Okay, okay!" she cried at length, rallying. "So we've deduced the cause of Radu's mystery illness. Here I stand, apparently!" She shook herself and focused through her shame. "So how do we fix it?"

"Ah! In three parts!" the Doctor exclaimed, darting around the exam bed. "First," he said, pointing at Radu, "we break his physiological attunement to you," he pointed at Suzee. "Then we break your psychic transmission to him," he pointed back at Radu. Then he pointed at both of them, his arms crossing. "And then the two of you work out what you're going to do to keep this from happening again." He glanced down and uncrossed his arms a bit sheepishly. "Though that last bit will probably be less of a group effort, I would imagine…"

Suzee shook her head. "How can I stop doing something I don't even…"

"Ah, ah, ah! _You_ are issue number two. No cutting in line!"

"Fine, so how do we deal with issue number one?"

"We finish what Rosie started with my sonic screw driver, of course!"

"But that's the lowest setting, Doctor," Rosie protested. "You said so yourself, and it isn't powerful enough. So what can we do?"

"Isn't it obvious?" The Doctor winked conspiratorially. "We bring in a much more powerful source of sonic vibration."

Without waiting for more questions, much less permission, the Doctor activated his sonic screwdriver, ramped the setting up rapidly from a low resonant thrum to a piercing sonic squeal almost too high-pitched to hear, and pointed it with an air of solemn purpose at a patch of empty air about two paces to his right. The patch of air stretched and shimmered like a heat wave, glow a kind of inside out orangeish color, and suddenly there was a person occupying the previously empty space.

"Whoa," Catalina said, shaking herself. "That was _intensely_ weird."

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 **TBC**

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 **A/n: Review, or Thelma will sic the Gizbot on you –** _ **all**_ **the Gizbots!**


	9. Chapter 9

**Disclaimer: You know, philosophically speaking, none of us** _ **really**_ **owns anything… kind of like, practically speaking, I don't own Doctor Who or Space Cases. Or any money, since this is not for sale or profit. Bummer.**

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 **Chapter 9**

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"Cat!" Suzee cried, shocked nearly to tears to see her oldest friend again.

"Cat!" Rosie added helpfully, clapping her hands in excitement.

"Cat!" Harlan exclaimed in succession, his eyes lighting up. He took two steps forward before he stumbled to a halt, eyeing her with confusion.

"Why is she all see-through?" Bova wondered blandly.

Indeed, there was a sort of flatness to Catalina's presence, and if one squinted it was just possible to see the bulkhead right through her body.

"You guys can see me?" she exclaimed, an expression of joyful disbelief lighting up her face. Her voice echoed when she spoke, as though carried from somewhere far away.

"Sort of," Commander Goddard said slowly, cautious to trust something that seemed too good to be true. He turned to the Doctor. "How did you do that? And why _is_ she all 'see-through'?"

"Sonic atmospheric refraction," the Doctor replied. "You can see her and hear her because her psionic link to Suzee gives her a foothold in our dimension, but she isn't really, properly here." A wistful look entered his eye as he glanced back at her. "Just an image. No touch." Then he waggled his eyebrows mischievously at them. "Not yet, anyway!"

Quick as a wink, he whirled around, snatched up the microscanner, aimed it at Catalina and jammed his sonic screwdriver right up against the handle. The microscanner sparked and crackled and buzzed alarmingly before bursting forth with a blinding blue bolt of artron energy. The beam caught Catalina in the abdomen. There was a blinding flash and a subsonic _pop_ _!_

Catalina stumbled forward with a cry of surprise. Harlan leapt towards her, banishing that old echo from his nightmares as, to his astonishment, he reached out and caught her safely in his arms.

Cat blinked up at him and slowly smiled that quirky, enigmatic smile of hers.

"Thanks, Harlan," she chirped sweetly, and to his undying embarrassment, Harlan blushed.

Then everyone was crowding around her, greeting her and chatting enthusiastically all at once. Suzee was the last to step up beside her. The two old friends stared at each other in amazement for a moment, having never before existed in the same dimension at the same time.

"I never thought…"

"Me neither!"

It was so surreal that both began to laugh at the same time, before wrapping each other up in a long overdue hug.

"Awww!" Rosie cried, then, unable to contain herself, threw her arms around both of them and joined in.

"Yes, this is all very sweet," Miss Davenport observed at last, reigning in everyone's exuberance with a prim sniff. "But aren't we forgetting something?"

"Miss Davenport's right," Goddard said. "Much as I hate to rain on this parade, the Doctor must have had a reason for doing this."

"Too right you are," the Doctor concurred. He stood to one side, still holding the sparking microscanner and sonic screwdriver. "But first, I have an important question for Suzee."

Frowning, Suzee stepped uncertainly forward.

"What?"

"The dimensional gateway I opened to bring Catalina back will only remain active for another few minutes, just until the psychic signature that linked the two of you across dimensions begins to degrade. So I'm sorry, but you're going to have to decide now," he said, sympathetic but urgent.

"Decide what?"

"Whether you want to use it to go home."

"I… can go home?" Suzee's asked dumbly. Her face fell. Home. She should be ecstatic. "But what about…" she glanced towards Radu.

"There's a chance the psychic link will break when you cross the dimensional threshold," the Doctor told her.

"But there's a chance it won't?" Suzee asked.

The Doctor shrugged noncommittally. "Only one way to find out.

Suzee nodded. She thought of her family, her home, her world. She squared her shoulders.

"I'm staying."

"Suzee, you can't do that!" Rosie cried. "I mean, we'll miss you, of course we will, but… but what if this is your only chance to get back to your own world?"

"Radu wouldn't want you to give that up for him," Harlan said quietly, glancing furtively at Cat.

"They're right," Cat said, voice laden with a heavy heart. "Much as I hate that we've only had a few minutes together here, it wouldn't be right to hold you back. None of us would want to do that to you."

Suzee looked around at them and shook he head.

"It's not just for Radu," she said. "I'm not ready to leave any of you. I'm not ready to leave the Christa." She blew out a breath of relief as the decision settled in the pit of her stomach and felt right. "You guys are all my friends. We've just started our journey. I would never feel right going home while you guys are still lost in space." She smiled around at her crewmates – her friends. "We're all in this together." She turned towards the Doctor and nodded. "I'm staying!"

The Doctor's face split in a broad grin. He flicked the microscanner, dispelling the last of the artron energy he had generated and closing the dimensional door, then held it up and blew on the tip before holstering it back in its sheath.

"In that case, Suzee of the Christa, bring your friend Catalina, and we'll show Mom and Dad what she's good for!"

Catalina crossed her arms and cocked an eyebrow at the Doctor. "Excuse me, but I'm good for rather a lot of things!" she exclaimed. "For one thing, I…"

"Oh, look at the time, no time to chat, I'm afraid!" the Doctor exclaimed hurriedly, rushing around behind her and herding her towards the exam bed with a panicked expression on his face at the prospect of listening to another of Catalina's diatribes. "Stand here, and when I say so, give me your best sonic blast. I'll do the rest!"

"Man, poor Radu…" she said sympathetically. "You got it! Better cover your ears, guys," she grinned back at the rest of the crew. "I've been practicing!"

"My poor parents," Suzee said, smiling wistfully.

"I'd do as she says," the Doctor warned, then pointed his sonic screwdriver at Catalina's head. "Alright – now!"

Catalina drew in a deep breath, braced herself and screamed at the top of her lungs.

A wave of pure sonic energy erupted from her vocal cords, and, channeling up the funnel of her throat, erupted from her in a concentrated blast that rippled the very air, displaced the furniture, and knocked over every bottle and tool Thelma had just picked up off the floor.

Then the Doctor flicked on the sonic screwdriver.

The sonic blast suddenly amplified by a factor of twenty.

Everyone belatedly clapped their hands over their ears in distress.

Catalina stopped screaming. Then blinked in surprise and clapped her hands over her ears as, to her astonishment, her amplified scream continued to reverberate down over the exam bed and its beleaguered occupant. Both began to vibrate intensely. Slowly the Doctor slid one finger along the sonic screwdriver, and the hijacked sonic blast intensified in volume, but dropped in frequency, becoming a low, hypnotic thrum which suddenly resolved into a steady _dum-dum, dum-dum, dum-dum_ that pulsed through their bodies, not unlike a heartbeat – but a heartbeat the size of a whole planet.

For a moment, every member of the Christa's crew felt irrationally tiny and just a little bit afraid of the man making the whole world beat like a giant heart.

With a final flourish of the sonic screwdriver, the noise abruptly ceased. The crew looked expectantly at Radu. He remained motionless, eyes closed, seemingly unaffected. Harlan opened his mouth to say something scathing, when the sudden, deafening silence was broken by a beep from the biomonitor.

"His biostats are normalizing!" Rosie exclaimed. "I think he's going to be okay!"

"But why hasn't he woken up?" Bova wondered.

"What aspect of the phrase 'three parts' is eluding you people?" the Doctor wondered incredulously.

"Yeah, yeah," Harlan said, stepping up between Catalina and Suzee, and then sidling closer to Cat as inconspicuously as possible. Suzee glanced his way, smirking to herself; she could almost be offended at how quickly she'd been forgotten, if it weren't so darn adorable. "So part two, break the psychic transmission."

"But how?" Suzee repeated.

"By resolving and reversing the psychological backlog in your metaconcious mind via tangible expression of your repressed emotions," the Doctor said with a nod.

The blank stares he received were deafening.

"Am I the only one who still can't follow this guy?" Catalina asked.

The Doctor sighed and rolled his eyes, ostensibly searching for the same patience Commander Goddard had failed to find on the ceiling.

"Am I the only one here who's ever heard of Sleeping Beauty?" he retorted.

"Oh, I know it!" Rosie cried. "The old Earth story about the sleeping princess under a magic spell, and the prince wakes her up by…" Rosie stopped, and her face somehow managed to get redder. "Oh…" she giggled.

"What?" Suzee demanded.

Rosie plucked at her elbow, and when Suzee bent down, she whispered something in her ear. It was interesting to watch Suzee's face contort through an impressive array of emotions. She threw the Doctor a mortified glare.

"I did say the fairytale writes itself," the Doctor said matter-of-factly, but there was a gleam in his eye that said he was entirely too pleased with himself, and entirely too amused by her humiliation.

"I… but… I…" Suzee whined, sputtering and looking around for some way out.

When her eyes finally settled on Radu, they softened minutely, then hardened with an almost grim determination. Clenching her fists like she was walking into a fight, she marched squarely over to him, sank down on the exam bed beside him, leaned resolutely forward and kissed him. It had happened so quickly that nobody even had time to be surprised, though several of them did their best. Surely that wasn't…

An amorphous cloud of purple energy, barely more than a translucent vapor, wafted off of Radu and dissipated into Suzee as she lifted her lips slowly away from his. The 'spell' was lifted.

Suzee leaned back, watching Radu intently, and for a moment nothing happened. Then he shifted with a sleepy little hum, and his eyes fluttered open. He blinked a few times before he managed to focus on her.

"Suzee," he said quietly, a small smile lighting up his face. Then he glanced away, embarrassed, then back towards her. "Um…what's going on? Are you…" his brow furrowed at the expression she was showing him. "…um… are you mad at me or something?"

"No!" Suzee snapped in distress. "Look, I _like_ you, okay? I really, really like you! And I thought you liked Elmira, and I have to go home someday, so I was trying not to let myself like you! But it turns out I can't _help_ it!" she shouted accusingly, as though it were somehow all his fault. Radu winced at her volume, staring at her in complete mystification. "And apparently it's my fault that you got sick because you were listening to my heartbeat, and my brain was leaking. So, I'm saying out loud! I like you! Got it!"

Humiliated beyond coping, Suzee sprang up and turned to run from the room, when suddenly she was jerked to a halt. She looked down at the restraining hand on her arm, implacable as steel, but so carefully gentle where it rested just above her elbow, then up at Radu. There was a look in his eyes she'd never seen before as he pulled her back towards him.

Suzee barely had time to register the fluttering of her heart as he levered himself upright, drew her face down to his and kissed her.

It was sweetly brief and over way too soon. Suzee blinked her eyes open (even though she didn't remember closing them). Radu was looking everywhere but her, breathing a little too quickly, his free hand gripping the far edge of the exam bed hard enough to leave a handprint in the solid metal (his other hand was folded carefully over hers).

"I, um…" he swallowed hard and glanced up at her with a hopeful smile, then away again. "I really like you too," he murmured.

It was so obvious by now as to be a given really. But Suzee found that hearing it said out loud meant something all the same. Overwhelmed, she wrapped her arms around his shoulders and kissed him again. This time he responded, and fireworks exploded behind her eyes just as…

"Alright, alright, break it up!" Miss Davenport's disapproving voice came crashing like a wrecking ball into the bubble of their own little world, bringing the rest of reality rudely with it. Radu and Suzee looked up to find the crew watching them rather too intently with varying degrees of amusement and annoyance. They leapt apart, instantly mortified. But Radu didn't let go of Suzee's hand.

Mercifully, true to form, Radue found a way to break up the tension by realizing that there were more people than usual aboard the Christa.

"Catalina?" he exclaimed incredulously.

"The one and only!" she said proudly.

Radu smiled, unabashedly pleased to see her.

"How?" he exclaimed.

"Me!" the Doctor exclaimed, waving both hands at him happily. "Hello at last! I think you just handled part three, by the way," he told Suzee conspiratorially. She huffed and rolled her eyes, and blushed a bit more for good measure.

"I, uh, I don't get it," Radu admitted haltingly. "Who are you?"

"The Doctor!"

"Doctor?" Radu asked quizzically. "Doctor who?"

 **.**

* * *

 **TBC**

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 **A/n: Remember when Suzee told Commander Goddard that Catalina was at her house, rewiring her dog? Am I the only one who instantly thought, "K-9, is that you?" Let me know in your review, or Suzee will have to read it from your mind and tell me what you think, along with your banking information.**


	10. Chapter 10

**Disclaimer: Someday I shall rule the world, and then Doctor Who and Space Cases shall be mine! But for now, they still don't belong to me, and this story is not for sale or profit.**

 **A/n: The 20** **th** **anniversary of Space Cases is coming up in March! Break out those old grainy VHS home video recordings, or make a wish on a star that they'll finally release the show on DVD!**

 **Last chapter! Hope you enjoyed reading, but if not, I enjoyed writing it! I regret nothing!**

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* * *

 **Chapter 10**

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* * *

Several hours later, once Radu had received a clean bill of health from Rosie and the Doctor and auto-repairs were sufficiently underway, the crew of the Christa gathered in the team room for an impromptu celebration – all things considered, it just felt necessary. So games were brought out and the food wheel was bribed into producing some relatively edible snacks, and everyone got down to the business of laughing and eating and telling stories – most of them tall tales recited by Harlan or Cat.

Once Suzee got over her initial embarrassment, she seemed to have decided to embrace the new dynamic whole heartedly, and was taking every spare opportunity she could find to show Radu her over-developed flirtatious side.

Radu, not quite so quick on the uptake, seemed to have developed a permanent blush and a humiliating stutter, but he also couldn't seem to stop smiling, so he was probably going to be okay. Probably.

.

Later on, Harlan managed to find himself standing conveniently next to Cat.

"Hey, Cat, you know, with all this business about a kiss saving the day…" he said smoothly, turning on the charm.

Cat turned an intense look on him and raised a thoughtful eyebrow. Then she snorted inelegantly.

"Oh please!" she demanded, crossing her arms. "You mean like you kissed Suzee?"

"You, uh, you saw that, huh?" Harlan faltered, his game falling away in the blink of an eye. "Well, that was just… I mean, it wasn't…you know, you were… and I was just…"

"Uh-huh," Catalina said primly.

With a proud sniff, she turned on her heel and walked briskly away, Harlan trailing after her offering pleas and apologies to her intractable back - but anyone who was watching from afar might have noticed the small, secret little smile on her face as she led Harlan on the beginning of a merry chase. He had definitely met his match.

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* * *

Meanwhile, Bova was leaning his chin on his hand across the Minbar chess board from Rosie. From where he sat, he could see Suzee flirting mercilessly with Radu, Catalina ruthlessly tormenting Harlan, and Rosie's knight taking his king.

"Checkmate!" Rosie trilled cheerfully.

"That just figures," Bova groused. "They get girlfriends and I get beaten at chess. Why does everybody else have all the luck?

"Oh, I don't know, Bova," Rosie said nonchalantly as she stood up and walk around the chess board. "I think you're just not looking hard enough!" Leaning down, she kissed him quickly on the cheek, then turned and walked away with a sunny, "Good game!"

Bova stared after her, mouth hanging open, and for once he had nothing negative to say.

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* * *

Commander Goddard and Miss Davenport stood side by side beside the food wheel, watching all their worst nightmares begin to slowly solidify into a hopeless, terrifying reality.

"It's only going to get worse, you know," Miss Davenport said bleakly. "Soon they'll be crawling all over each other. Like lice."

"I did not sign on for this," Goddard replied gloomily, then peered down at her from the corner of his eye. "You get first watch."

"Don't be silly," Miss Davenport sniffed. "That's what Thelma is for."

The Commander snorted, and allowed himself a small smile. Harlan's words from earlier up at the Compost chose that moment to come back to him, and he shook his head in disbelief, though his grin widened minutely.

"Well, come on, 'Mommy Dearest'," he sighed. "Might as well get ourselves some snacks before the devour everything edible."

Miss Davenport smirked gently back, bumping his shoulder with her own.

"Indeed, best keep our strength up, 'Dad'," she concurred. "It would appear we're going to need it."

.

* * *

The Doctor was late to the party, so there was a chorus of cheers when the team room door whooshed open. They died down abruptly.

"Oh, it's just Thelma," said Harlan. Cat smacked him on the arm.

Thelma cocked her head mechanically. "Yes, it is just me," she agreed ponderingly. Organics did seem to enjoy stating the obvious. She set her burden down on the table – a newly cut deutronium prism. "The Doctor sends his compliments. And a deutronium prism," she added, deciding to try it out. She didn't see the appeal.

"Where is the Doctor?" Rosie asked.

"You know what, I'll go find him," Suzee said, heading for the door. Remembering what it felt like to look into his eyes, she had a feeling she knew.

"I'll, uh… I'll go with you!" Radu called after her.

"HALT!" Miss Davenport barked ominously, blocking his way. "I _don't_ think so! There are going to be some new rules around here!"

Suzee cast a pitying look over her shoulder, shrugged and escaped into the corridor.

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* * *

The blue box was still in the medlab, a number of thick cables running from the open doorway to one of the interface terminals. The Doctor, bent almost double over the monitor, had just finished accessing the Christa's memory banks by interfacing her with the TARDIS - including the hidden datacore that the crew hadn't yet figured out how to unlock.

And he had found out that there was more in store for them than they could possibly imagine!

"Whoa… you don't say!" he breathed, astonished – a truly novel sensation for him these days. His eyes flashed with mischief and delight as the truth behind the Christa's origins and real mission scrolled past him. "That's going to be some kind of ride, isn't it?"

This peculiar collection of kids and their one-of-a-kind ship were in for an amazing adventure! So amazing that, for once, the Doctor was almost tempted to stay. Almost.

Instead, he closed down the interface, re-burying the secrets of the Christa, her mission, and all that lay ahead for her unlikely crew, flung the cables back through the TARDIS door, and made to follow them inside.

"Trying to sneak off without saying goodbye?"

The Doctor paused. Suzee stood in the door to the medlab, arms crossed, looking a little smug, and more than a little scolding.

"Well, you know how it is," the Doctor shrugged, spreading his hands. "Places to go, people to meet, planets to save, ostriches to ride. You know, I once saved a planet of ostriches! But I'm not allowed to go back now," he grimaced. "Accidentally made an omelet out of the crown prince. Honest mistake."

Suzee giggled, then cocked her head, then walked up to him, her face growing serious.

"Are you going to be okay?" she asked.

The Doctor stilled for a moment, then scoffed.

" 'Course I'll be okay! Why wouldn't I be?"

"Because I think you're lonely. That maybe you have been for a long time." She bit her lip. "You know… you could stay here," she offered hopefully. "We're kind of a bunch of screw-up misfits, but we have a lot of fun!"

The Doctor smiled at her slowly, sadly.

"Or you could come with me," he said quietly. "All of time and space at your fingertips."

Suzee looked past him into the open door of the TARDIS, and knew a moment of sharp temptation. Then she shook her head just a little sadly.

"Like I said, my place is here," she replied. There was a quiet whoosh behind her, and she turned to see Radu step uncertainly through the door and smiled. "With this crew."

The Doctor nodded knowingly, and Suzee once again perceived the vast turn of the universe gleaming in his eyes.

"As mine is in there," he replied, then turned a bright smile on Radu. "How's the weather in there, Dreamboat?"

"Heh, uh, just fine, now," Radu replied, then extended a hand towards the Doctor. "Thanks to you."

The Doctor didn't usually do handshakes, any more than he did salutes, but he recalled vividly what the TARDIS interface with the Christa had told him about this young man's future. _Noble Radu, worthy and brave…_ how often did one get the chance to shake hands with a legendary hero before the legend began? (Well, alright, the Doctor met them all the time – but he rarely shook their hands!) So he clapped his into Radu's, then tried his very best not to screw up his face too much as it was almost crushed in Radu's gentle squeeze of gratitude.

"It's been an honor and a privilege!" he said tightly, then leaned in closer and murmured, "You'll want to watch that grip when you're holding onto _her_." He waggled his eyebrows conspiratorially at the goofy grin that spread irrepressibly across the blushing boys face, then spun around and faced Suzee again.

"So I guess this is goodbye," Suzee said.

"Oh, I wouldn't say that," the Doctor exclaimed. "You never know where I'll turn up. Or when! I have a feeling we all might meet again someday." _In fact_ _,_ the Doctor thought a bit deviously, _I think I'll plan on it!_

Impulsively, Suzee went up on her tip toes and hugged him.

"Until the next time then!" she said as she let him go. Coming from her it sounded half an order, half a promise. The Doctor knew her type – he'd been traveling with them for years. For a precarious moment, he almost admitted to himself that she was right – that he needed somebody. For a moment, he almost asked her once more to come along.

Instead he spun around and stepped into the TARDIS, then poked his head back out and shot the young couple one last wink before slamming the doors.

.

* * *

"So how did you escape Miss Davenport?" Suzee asked, feeling suddenly, unaccustomedly shy.

"Oh, uh, that was Harlan," Radu replied; he sounded grateful that she'd broken the silence. "He somehow managed to glue the back of Commander Goddard's uniform to the back of Miss Davenport's. He said it was for their own good, and he'd let them have the solvent when they admitted how much they like each other. I haven't figured out how he managed it yet, but I didn't stick around to find out." He glanced down at his hands, grinning as she giggled uncontrollably, but his expression quickly sobered. "Listen, Suzee, I'm sorry for all the trouble I caused. I know I shouldn't have… you know… but… I just couldn't help it."

"It wasn't your fault, Radu. It was mine," she shrugged awkwardly. "Sorry for almost hypnotizing you to death."

Radu licked his lower lip nervously, a quirk Suzee had always found endearing.

"The thing is," he said slowly. "I, uh… I don't think _that's_ really why I couldn't help it." He looked up at her meaningfully.

Suzee was sure she'd never blushed so often in one day.

"I guess we both messed up," she conceded magnanimously. "Still just a couple of space cases after all!" She offered him a lopsided smile and took a small step closer to him. "But I've gotta say, this time I'm kind of glad we did."

Suzee hadn't thought that pale Andromedan skin could achieve that shade of red.

"We'd, uh, better get back," he said, sounding a little breathless. "I shouldn't have ducked out the way I did. Miss Davenport will never let me hear the end of it. I just had to, you know, make sure you weren't running away with the hero in the weird spaceship!"

He laughed at his own flat joke, sounding painfully awkward. Suzee's chest tightened sweetly at the uncertainty underlying his teasing.

"Now why would I want to do that," she stepped closer again, "when we're alone together at last?"

He looked away. "I-I don't know. It's just… sometimes I can't tell…"

Charmed by the courage of his honesty, Suzee reached out and, conscious of what the Doctor had told her about Andromedans and touch, wound one spiraling lock from his mane of blond hair around her finger. It was surprisingly soft for a strand as strong as steel. His breath hitched when she then brushed the back of her finger casually against his neck, just under the line of his jaw, and looked up at him from under her lashes.

"Well, I know you can hear the beat of my heart," she murmured into the small space between them. She wasn't flirting anymore – she was completely serious. "Can you tell what its saying right now?"

Radu looked up at her, his heart in his eyes, and then, sighing, reached for her.

Just before their lips met, they were rather rudely interrupted by a wheezing, groaning roar and a flashing pulse of light. Suzee and Radu smiled resignedly at each other. Then looked up in wonder as, in a swirling whoosh of phantom wind, the strange Doctor and his strange blue box faded away and were gone.

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* * *

 **End**  
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 **A/n – And that's all she wrote – literally, that was how the dream ended.** **But who knows, perhaps the Doctor and the Space Cases will visit me in my dreams again - the Doctor certainly seems to think it could happen! Anyway, i** **f you've ever wondered what is going on inside your humble author's head, wonder no more, that was pretty much it – fandom, crossovers, shipping, and just a hint of a drunken monkey dancing around the edges, banging the bits that stick out too much with a half-empty vodka bottle. Be afraid, be very afraid – but before you run away, please leave a review!  
**


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